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The gameplay has an unsophisticated feel to it, which honestly makes sense. There’s no peeking around corners or cover system, but as many of your enemies attack from above and at face level, "cover" doesn't really cover it. And since the marines in the film don’t barrel roll across doorways, you too are sans barrel roll.

Speaking of marines, you have at least one NPC companion with you, so it’s not as lonely as playing a marine was in Aliens vs Predator (the 1999 game. We don’t talk about the 2010 one). And awesomely, you can play any campaign level with up to three buddies in drop-in co-op too. Thanks, Gearbox!

The AI controlling the NPC marines and adversaries is decently smart, which livens up combat. I learned that I could fall back and let my main buddy O’Neal take the heat. Plus he responded to my movements, flanking to cover me rather than just following a script. As a nice touch, your fellow marines also have multiple lines for the same situations, like “Eyes up” and “They’re in the ceiling.”

Respawning, I also noticed O’Neal went ahead of me, sometimes going left and sometimes going right: the AI doesn’t always make the same decisions each time. That makes replaying combat more interesting; you can’t memorize a sequence of actions. And while enemies mostly spawn predictably (mostly), you similarly can’t say exactly how they’re going to jump out and—AUGH! Even pick-ups are semi-random in nature. Just because you found a medkit once doesn’t mean you’ll find it after respawning.

And there’s one other thing Gearbox has totally got right: The best way to shoot really is to use short, controlled bursts.

The Motion Tracker: “Man, this is a big f*cking signal”

There is no mini-map in ACM, which sucked hard until I got used to my motion tracker, a nifty little multitool. Objectives appear on the tracker’s display, with an arrow if they’re out of the tracker’s display range. If you orient yourself to look in the direction the tracker indicates, then (and only then) do you see an actual marker. It serves to preserve the movie ambience.

The motion tracker also picks up collectible (and stationary) dogtags if they’re in range, so keep an eye out, marine.

You can’t use the tracker while firing a weapon, so that means if you’re running and gunning (and you’ll be doing plenty) you’ll often find yourself trying to find a quiet moment to whip out the tracker before you’re overrun by enem—AUGH!

Health: “Physically she’s okay”

A:CM takes a middle road between automatic regeneration and player reliance on found medkits. Your overall health is segmented into three bars.

If you don’t take too much damage, you’ll automatically recover to the top of the top bar.

If you lose enough health to cost you the whole top bar, you’ll only be able to regenerate to the top of the middle one, and will be maxed out at 2/3rd’s health until you find a medkit.

Lose the middle bar too, and you’ll be down to a max of 1/3 health.

Did I mention that, unlike ammo and armor, medkits are as rare as alien eyes? So while you regenerate health at a pretty fast clip, you’ll still be trying to take as little damage as possible in order not to be knocked down to one bar’s worth of health.

Healthy or not, death happens sometimes without warning if you lose track of aliens or forget to use your motion tracker. It kind of sucks to have survived a particularly nasty shootout, only to have some alien get the drop on you. And when I say, “Get the drop on you,” I mean they leap on top of you, and when you’re down, they thrust their glistening second jaw into your prone body. It’s a startling, disturbing, and creepily sexual way to die.

Experience, Ranks, and Challenges: “Now All We Need Is a Deck of Cards”

You know the drill: Gain experience to gain rank and earn a “commendation” point, which allows you to upgrade weapons with better sights, faster firing or reload speeds, larger magazines, or different alternate fire modes. If you’re playing xeno (only possible in multiplayer) you instead earn “mutation” points instead to upgrade your Soldier, Spitter, or Lurker xeno abilities. Experience and upgrades are shared between the campaign and multiplayer Versus modes, so leveling up in PvP also helps you in the story.

Bonus experience can be earned by finding dogtags from the Sulaco marines and audio recordings from the surface in the campaign levels, as well as by completing challenges: marine, campaign and multiplayer objectives, such as “Kill two enemies with one alternate-fire shot from a rifle” or “Get 10 headshots with the service pistol.” These challenges are serial, so you only unlock the latter when completing the former.

There are also unique “legendary” weapons, leftovers from the Sulaco marines and special versions of the game’s standard pistol, shotgun, pulse rifle, etc. They’re better than the basic versions of the same gun, but once you upgrade your weapons they quickly become better than their legendary counterparts.

Multiplayer: “They’re All Around Us, Man!”

Multiplayer is a big feature, so much that I may devote another article to it. I already mentioned campaign co-op. Due to technical difficulties during the press beta I was unable to explore in detail the four “Versus” modes available at game launch (a fifth, “Bug Hunt”, is due next month as DLC). But in brief:

- Team Deathmatch is 5 by 5 marine-on-alien action. Both sides have a power-up to aim for: For the marines, it’s the always-awesome sentry gun. For the aliens, a Crusher, more than double the usual size and hard as hell to bring down.

- Escape is ACM’s version of Left4Dead. Four marines have to reach an exit while four xenos try to stop them. The xenos get to respawn. The marines don’t. If just one marine makes it to the end, that’s a marine victory. Otherwise, it’s xeno high-fives.